Kitchen Remodeling Nightmares

[PaulaJK]

Oh, Vengoff....You'll have so-o-o many more stories to tell

before it ends!!!/g

--Where do you find these people?? Everywhere! We used

a CKD who had marvelous pre-sale delivery. Promise her

anything but give her ___________!

--One of the promises was that the KD firm had their own

contracter who was dedicated to your job/ stayed right through.

Right! except for the days he didn't appear because he

was finishing other jobs. These days were not predictable

based on what he said the evening before.

--Our pompous CKR mis-measured & mis-designed one

area of the kitchen. Similar to your sotry, he lengthened

a counter and ordered extra cabinets. While we were able

to cancel/change the order, we also had to change the

configuration and give up space and a lazy susan in the

process!

--Our CKD recommended a marble floor, so durable it

hadh had years of waer in a local church with no problems!

We have had soiling from the get go and have had to

have it refinished 3 times in 3 yrs.

--The crackerjack tech our CKD offered to fix all the dents

the installer made in the rather expensive Seimatic

cabinets turned out to be totally incompetent. He

used the WRONG color to fix the flaws and although

this was admitted to, we fought months over getting

it corrected.

--The minute the cabinet doors were on, the contracter's men

gouged them while moving a ladder.

I could go on, but I think I'll stop here lest I

become flooded with too, too many unhappy

memories> Oh, did I mention, that in my new

kitchen "with far more space" I couldn't fit

back in my original items?

--Our contractor,also, used our side yard as 'the dumpster'.

Why was I worried, he queried. His team was so lazy that

they threw their lunch pizza boxes & soda cans out the

door also.

[Blondie]

Oh, Vengoff....You'll have so-o-o many more stories to tell

before it ends!!!/g

--Where do you find these people?? Everywhere!  We used

a CKD who had marvelous pre-sale delivery. Promise her

anything but give her ___________!...

I'm very sorry to hear about your problems, PaulaJK. I have to ask if you checked this person's references (i.e., interviewed former clients and trade references). This is the most important step a homeowner can take to protect themselves.

Marble is not suitable for kitchens floors for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the possibility of staining. What is the finish? Tumbled or honed, I hope, because polished marble wouldn't be safe. There's a penetrating sealer called 511 Porous Plus that we've used with good results. It's expensive, but it may be worth a try to save you another refinishing.

[vengroff]

Yesterday the big cheese from the general contractor came out to see how his designer had managed to fail to order, or mis-order 12 of the 20 cabinetry components. While he was here, we went over some more of the plans, and discovered that the electricians failed to install one of the circuits they were supposed to have put in. The timing was perfect, because the drywall on the 14 holes they cut in the walls and ceilings of the apartment downstairs was finally patched, dry, sanded and ready to paint. Now they are down there cutting them out again. My tenant is going to love this. All the electrical work was supposed to be done in April before the tenant moved in. It didn't start until July.

I was just down there to see the carnage and guess what else I saw? The copper water supply line (see #7 above) was never reconnected to the new valve. It's just dangling from the ceiling.

[Nick]

Ven, this all sounds terrible. But I don't know which is worse, doing it yourself or hiring it done. See my last post here.

[Rachel Perlow]

Please accept my apologies as I say this: All these stories are making me feel much better about our project!

[vengroff]

Please accept my apologies as I say this: All these stories are making me feel much better about our project! 

Really, I'm sure there are competent people out there in this business. I'm absolutely sure there are. But depsite several recommendations for the people I am using, they have turned out to be universally horrible.

It seems they may be a victim of their own success. One of the subcontractors told me they called him yesterday and said they have 17 new kitchens that they have promised to start work on by the end of August. They asked him how many he (already working 70 hour weeks for them) could take on. Sounds like they need to retrain some of their top salespeople to do plumbing and electrical work so they can catch up before they sell any more.

I've decided to start double checking and QA'ing everything they do in advance (you know, kind of like what the general contractor is paid to do). So I called the appliance manager and asked him to fax me a copy of the distributer's invoice for the appliances. All I have in my files is the original quote he gave us back in March. I compared the two, and curiously enough, one of the model numbers did not match up. They got us a 30" oven instead of the 27" model specified in the quote. They were nice enough not to charge extra, but that's little consolation when the oven won't fit in the cabinet. This invoice is dated March 14. The appliances have been sitting in the warehouse awaiting delivery to my house for months. Yet in all this time, nobody bothered to cross check and make sure they were the right items. Nobody looked at the invoice long enough to think it was strange that we would be getting a 27" cabinet, a 27" microwave, a 27" warming drawer, and a 30" oven. Add a few more weeks delay now while they order the proper one. At least I caught it before they delivered it and it went onto one of the piles of unusable junk that now almost touch the ceilings in my living room and dining room.

[enthusiast]

it's not getting better is it?

hopefully these postings are proving a form of therapy...

if nothing else you can comfort yourself that we're enjoying your pain

[snowangel]

Ven, this all sounds terrible. But I don't know which is worse, doing it yourself or hiring it done.

I kind of wondered about that when I did the kitchen (myself). That is, until I started ripping into things and discovered just how shitty a job a contractor can do. I spent far longer getting things right than I ever anticipated, and far longer on the "repair" than the "redo."

I learned this when I redid the basement, and found things like sliced doors and yardsticks nailed together to serve as framing.

[PaulaJK]

Oh Vengoff, I feel your pain...and Rachel, your mirth.

Thanks Blondie for the product name. It is a slightly

polished marble and shows e-v-e-r-y spot. Pre-

reconstruction, we had a matte tile which wore

fabulously & showed no stains.

[vengroff]

Nobody showed up for work today. I don't know if that's better or worse than last Friday when they were here but three cans of Pepsi mysteriously disappeared from the mini-fridge I bought. My new fridge is supposed to have already been installed, but apparently they delivered it to another customer who yelled louder than me and now they have to order a replacement.

And the contractor wonders why I am hesitant to give them a key to the house so they can keep working when I go out of town later this week.

[vengroff]

It's finally starting to look like a kitchen, and I'm far to happy about that fact to complain any more or worry about the work yet to be done or how long it will take. Here are some progress photos:

This is the view entering from the dining room and looking diagonally across the kitchen from southwest to northeast. This dishwasher will be covered with a wood front panel to match the cabinets. The main sink will be in the corner, to the right of the window. The hole in the wall above the range is where a hood will be. It will vent out through a hole that will be cut in the exterior brick wall you can see behind the drywall. There will be upper cabinets all around.

This is a view entering from the back door and looking diagonally across the kitchen from northwest to southeast. The big hole in the wall is a pass-thru to a bar on the other side, in the dining room. This used to be a solid wall, but it should open things up a lot more. The boxes in the dining room are upper cabinets and a few misordered cabinets that have to be sent back. There will also be a sink on this side, in the second cabinet from the right. With the two sinks, we have two self-contained work areas, each will full access to the range and the refridgerator directly behind it on the west wall.

This is a view from the northeast corner, where the sink will be, towards the west wall. The oven, microwave, and warming drawer are now all operational. The fridge is plugged in, but not finished or hooked up to the water supply. Like the dishwasher, it will have wood fron panels and handles matching those on the cabinets. There will also be a small cabinet above it that will come up to the height of the oven cabinet. The idea is to reduce the number of bulky-looking appliances in the small kitchen by having them blend in with the cabinets as much as possible.

This is a view from the southeast corner looking back to the northwest corner, where the back door is, and the west wall. Again we have the fridge and the major cooking appliances except for the range, which is on the opposite wall. This side of the fridge will also be wood-clad. That wood leaning up against it is a mis-sized door for one of the base cabinets.

As soon as the workmen left for the day, the cats came out from hiding to check on the progress. I promised not to complain in this post, so I won't even mention the scratches on the floor or how they got there.

[Jason Perlow]

Cool. An electric oven AND a gas oven. Wish we had that. We just didnt have the room, your kitchen looks considerably bigger than ours, or at least configured in a way that allows for more appliances. Cool cabinets and hardware. Very similar in taste to what we went with.

Is that refrigerator a Subzero? I see you went with the Viking. No DCS, eh?

[vengroff]

Cool. An electric oven AND a gas oven. Wish we had that. We just didnt have the room, your kitchen looks considerably bigger than ours, or at least configured in a way that allows for more appliances. Cool cabinets and hardware. Very similar in taste to what we went with.

Is that refrigerator a Subzero? I see you went with the Viking. No DCS, eh?

The range is actually dual-fuel, so it's two electric ovens, one 30" monster and one 27" in the wall for less ambitious projects. The fridge is indeed a subzero. It's the only 30" wide tall built-in model we could find from any manufacturer. You can't really tell from the photos (except maybe the cat one) but there is not a lot of side-to-side clearance between cabinets when entering the kitchen from either the dining room or the back door. If we went wider than a 27" oven and a 30" fridge it would have gotten really tight. The overall kitchen is about 13' by 10'.

We went with Viking because nobody closer than Baltimore can service a DCS if anything goes wrong. There was one distributer in Virginia who would sell us a DCS, but they didn't have any floor models we could look at. We also thought that it would be less hassle to get all the appliances from one vendor. As it turned out, it probably could not have been any worse if we had used two.

[Jason Perlow]

The overall kitchen is about 13' by 10'.

Yeah, you went with smaller size appliances than we did. Your kitchen is the same size as ours, but we went with a 36 inch range and a 33 inch refrigerator, so that took up a lot of space. The main part of our kitchen is configured in an L-shape and on the opposite side we have that peninsula sticking out with a table-top style microwave and the bookshelves/desk hutch in it. Rachel didn't want to replace her microwave so we didn't go with a built in. It was a stupid decision because the microwave ended up dropping dead only a few months after the kitchen was finished and we had to buy a new one. We probably could have squeezed a little bit more room out of those cabinets if we had gone with a microwave with a built-in that matched the other appliances. That and we used a non-kitchen cabinet for that desk-hutch thing, which was a royal pain in the ass because it didn't line up like the other kitchen cabinets did and we had to put on a custom moulding to fill a 1" gap above where the countertop is. Not to mention custom soffets for the ceiling there. Can't tell, can ya?

[elmo]

Is that a noose? It can't be that bad...

[fifi]

Jason... I am interested in your lighting. It looks like you have a general lighting recessed sort of in the middle and then what looks like additional recessed lights around the perimeter over the counter areas. Is that what I am seeing? Can you describe them in a little more detail? How did that work out? I am laying out the lighting plan for the house and I am paying particular attention to the kitchen.

[Jason Perlow]

Yup, thats what you're seeing. Lights also directly above the countertops underneath the cabinets as well.

They are regular recessed can lights, nothing special. Over the peninsula, we have a very bright flying-saucer shaped halogen light on the ceiling which provides additional illumination.

[fifi]

I don't have upper cabinets to get the lighting from under there. (I had these in my previous house and, you are right, they are great. But, I am a short person and I hate upper cabinets. I will have plenty of storage without them so I left them out and opted for windows instead.)

Do the perimeter lights give you ample lighting? Are they the more focused diretional spots? Thanks.

[Jason Perlow]

the perimeter lights are very useful, yes. They aren't directionally positioned though, they just point stright down and illuminate a general area.

[Rachel Perlow]

on the opposite side we have that peninsula sticking out with a table-top style microwave and the bookshelves/desk hutch in it. Rachel didn't want to replace her microwave so we didn't go with a built in. It was a stupid decision because the microwave ended up dropping dead only a few months after the kitchen was finished and we had to buy a new one.

That's not why we didn't get a built in microwave! A built in microwave costs at least 3 times what a countertop model costs. And, if something goes wrong it is a major job to replace -- involving workmen and additional cost. I figured we'd be replacing the previous microwave eventually and I planned to get a stainless steel model, but that didn't work out when we went shopping (the stainless steel models were all either too big or too small). But the black works OK, it balances out the top of the range and the side of the fridge which show a little bit. Similar reasoning went into deciding on a counterdepth stand alone refridgerator (built in "look") vs. an actual built in model.

[Rachel Perlow]

The perimeter lights are not the same as the regular hi-hats. They are more focused spot lighting. I think they are called W.A.C. lights (I can give you the Home Depot SKU number if you want), and they use halogen bulbs.

For under-cabinet lights, insist that they position them to the front of the cabinet. They are useless in the back (where they originally wanted to install them) and more than marginally, but still not fabulously, better in the middle of the cabinet. You want them to spot light the workspace, not the stuff you have lined up along the backsplash, if your kitchen looks like ours.

[fifi]

Thanks Rachel. I was thinking from the picture that that is what they are. (Us gals just KNOW these things. )

The only place that I plan to use the under upper cabinet light is at the beverage area. I hear what you say about positioning. I have it centered in the new house as that is a pass-thru. In my previous house, I had them move them up to the front of the upper cabinets. That was a big improvement.

[vengroff]

That's not why we didn't get a built in microwave! A built in microwave costs at least 3 times what a countertop model costs. And, if something goes wrong it is a major job to replace -- involving workmen and additional cost.

We went with an intermediate solution. Our microwave actually is a countertop model, but we got a matching trim kit to go with it. The kit consists of a special metal metal shelf that is attached to the inside of the cabinet and some trim that screws onto the front of the cabinet. The microwave sits on the metal shelf. The stainless steel trim around it matches the front, and has vents to allow air to circulate. Undo four screws and it pops off and you can pull the microwave right out if need be.

[vengroff]

For under-cabinet lights, insist that they position them to the front of the cabinet. They are useless in the back (where they originally wanted to install them) and more than marginally, but still not fabulously, better in the middle of the cabinet. You want them to spot light the workspace, not the stuff you have lined up along the backsplash, if your kitchen looks like ours.

Excellent tip. I'll make sure to ask for ours to be mounted up front when they go in.

[vengroff]

Countertops are in!

The plumbing should be hooked up later this week. The hood and upper cabinets will be next week.